Friday, February 27, 2015

“What are those fruits, Aidyn?” Apple Blossom
asked when I held a container of grapes out to her. “They look just like onyx
stones!”

“They’re called grapes,” I told her. “You’ve
never had one before?”

She shook her head. “Do they taste
good?” she asked. “Can I taste one?”

“They’re delicious,” I said.
“They’re sweet like candy. And of course you can taste one, that’s why I
brought them here.” I plucked a big grape from the bunch and handed it to Apple
Blossom. She studied it for a few moments before popping it into her
mouth—“Mmmm!” Her eyes lit up, and though she chewed politely she couldn’t stop
a bit of juice from dribbling down her lip. When she finished, she held out her
hand and asked, “Can I have another one, please?”

I pulled a whole cluster of grapes
from the bushel and placed them in her waiting hand. We ate as we made our way
to the bridge, which was free of the beetle-like soldiers for the third day in
a row. There would be no work or research today, as with yesterday. I had spent
the day catching butterflies with Apple Blossom, Wildflower, and Holly Berry.
The Jadeites have different names for butterflies than we do, and as enchanted
as the girls seemed to be with our run-of-the-mill species names, I found the
Jadeite terms to be vastly superior. A tiger swallowtail, for instance, is
known as a “glorious sunbeam.” A mourning cloak is a “garnetwing,” and a
painted lady is an “orange jewel.” The names they used made the butterflies
sound as beautiful as they really were. After the butterfly hunting, we sat
down to fresh baked fruit turnovers courtesy of the queen—not a servant or a
cook, but the queen herself. We got two each, and I was pleased that she had gone
out of her way to bake some for me. I went home that evening thinking, This is how it ought to be every day. No
unnecessary work, no looking for ‘connections,’ just us enjoying our friendship
for what it is.

“Can I give some of the grapes to my
friends?” Apple Blossom asked. “And can I take some home to Mother and Father?”

“Sure you can,” I said. “I’ll even
bring you some more the next time I come here.”

It was a good day. The sun was
shining, and it was the pleasant sort of warm that August brings after all of
July’s sticky heat and humidity. The Bell’s Rush sang its happy tinkling bell song,
mixed in with birdsong, the buzzing of cicadas, and the occasional croaking of
early frogs. Sweet black grapes tasted even sweeter when you ate them with a
friend on a day like today. “Let’s go pick cranberry greens with Raindrop,”
Apple Blossom suggested. It didn’t sound like the most exciting thing to do,
but I agreed to it because I wanted to see how Jadeites went about picking
cranberry greens and what they used them for. Besides, cranberries grow in
bogs, and there were plenty of interesting things to be found in bogs: bog
stones, flowered reeds, frogs of all kinds, and more besides.

Raindrop was helping her mother can
the last of the season’s blueberries when we stopped by, but her mother was
willing to let her go with us. She shot an icy look at me and told Raindrop,
“Be careful.” Before I could respond, Apple Blossom chimed in with, “Of course
we’ll be careful! We’re only picking greens. Oh, and would you and Raindrop
care for some grapes? They’re a delightfully sweet fruit that Aidyn brought in
from the human world!” She had
emphasized the word “human” in order to make them sound interesting and exotic,
but Raindrop and her mother looked uneasy, even appalled. “You shouldn’t be
eating any human food, Apple Blossom,” Raindrop’s mother said. “They put
strange things in their food. It may not be safe.”

“There’s nothing strange in these
grapes!” I assured her. “They’re only fruits, like your blueberries. Apple
Blossom’s eaten about twelve of them now and she’s all right.” Apple Blossom
nodded to affirm me. I held the container of grapes out to them. “Go on, try
one.”

Raindrop looked up at her mother,
who carefully plucked a grape from the bushel and inspected it, before taking
an experimental bite. “It’s very sweet,” she determined. “It’s so much sweeter
than any fruit I’ve ever tasted.” She plucked another and handed it to
Raindrop, who popped it into her mouth without a second thought. Her eyes
sparkled with delight at the taste, and she quickly pulled off a second grape
and was reaching for a third before I handed her a cluster.

“Where do you get such sweet fruit?”
Raindrop asked as the three of us headed down the road together.

“From a store,” I told her. “The grapes
are grown on far-away farms called vineyards, and sent to stores. We buy them
from the stores. They’re so sweet because they’re grown that way—the farmer
makes sure the grapes turn out as big and sweet as they possibly can.”

“We grow things too,” said Raindrop,
“but we don’t grow things like these. We grow berries and apples and greens and
things like that.”

“What do you pick cranberry greens
for?” I asked. “Do you eat them?” I remembered watching them eat flowers at
Apple Blossom’s party—they had looked very confused when I was forced to turn
them down.

“No,” said Apple Blossom, “we like
to make things out of them.”

I decided I wanted to be surprised.
I didn’t ask anymore questions. We reached the bog, and Apple Blossom and
Raindrop threw off their shoes and splashed into the tea-colored water. I set
the container of grapes down and began to explore. I peered through reeds
looking for frogs (unfortunately, there were none). I walked along the bank
looking for bog stones. Apple Blossom waded up to me and tugged on my shirt.
“Come on, Aidyn! Don’t you want to help us?”

She didn’t have to ask me twice! I
threw my shoes down on the bank, rolled up my jeans, and splashed on in—and
yelped when I felt my feet sink into the mud. Immediately, the girls were at my
side. “What’s wrong, Aidyn?” “Are you okay? Did something bite you?” “I’m fine,
girls,” I assured them. “I didn’t expect the mud to be so deep. I’ve never gone
wading in a bog before.” Though I had them rolled up, my jeans still sported a
sopping layer of mud. Too bad I hadn’t thought to wear shorts like the girls
had. Apple Blossom took me by the hand and helped me through the mud. The water
was so dark and murky that my feet disappeared at the end of my legs. “How do
you girls find anything here, much less some little greens?” I asked.

“Look here!” Raindrop cried,
beckoning me over to where she knelt down. I let go of Apple Blossom’s hand
(“It’s okay, I can walk,” I assured her) and waded over to her. A little
cluster of tiny green leaves stuck up from the water, adding a pleasant
brightness to the murk. She grabbed the leaves and yanked out a mud-caked stalk
of greens and tiny, unripe cranberries. Apple Blossom waded over to us, and the
picking began. We waded, scouted, knelt, and yanked. We fell on our hands and
knees into the mud and came up laughing and tossing our hair. We made several
trips to the bank with handfuls of greens. Flies and dragonflies made music
around us, and every so often a colorful butterfly would land on a reed and
flex its wings before alighting.

The water was cleaner along the
bank, and that’s where we washed our greens and our hands. Now that we had a
decent pile (that now included water lilies), I asked, “So, what are we going
to do with them?”

“Well, first we’ll color them,” said
Apple Blossom, “and then we’ll make crowns, bracelets, and chains out of them.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you
mean, color them?”

Apple Blossom took a stalk and
passed it between her fingers once, twice, three times…and the next thing I
knew, the stalk was no longer green, but had turned a striking deep blue! “Oh
my goodness!” I exclaimed with a gasp. “How in the world did you do that?”

She answered by untucking from her
collar the little jade stone that she wore around her neck. I wished more than
ever that I could learn to work the jade essences and do pretty things like
that. But I could do nothing but sit and watch as Apple Blossom and Raindrop
colored the rest of the stalks blue, red, orange, yellow, gold, and pink. It
was an astounding thing to see real magic in action right before my eyes, and I
wondered what other kinds of magical powers were granted by the jade essences.

After the stalks were colored, Apple
Blossom sat down with me and guided me on how to weave them. She was simple and
patient with her instructions as she gently guided my fingers along; “First,
you move these leaves out of the way…you just flick them aside with your
fingers, like so. Now, just tie these ends together. That’s it, Aidyn, just tie
them right there! Now you weave them, like this…” It wasn’t long before I
realized that it was essentially the same as making a daisy chain, which I had
done on many boring summer afternoons. “I think I get it now, Apple Blossom,” I
told her as I weaved the two gold stalks together. “Thank you. I can work from
here.”

Apple Blossom nodded. “Okay, but be
sure to come to me if you need any help." “Will do,” I said with a smile. She
scampered off, and I continued my work. I decided that any necklace I happened
to make out of those lovely golden stalks would be a gift for Apple Blossom.
I’d weave in the stalks of crimson red and add some of those tiny green
cranberries as “jewels.” She would be delighted, as she had been with the crown
I had made her for her birthday, which seemed like such a while back. Beside
me, Apple Blossom supervised Raindrop’s construction with the same kind
patience that she had shown me. It never stops amazing me just how human that
she really is, even as the princess of a tribe of elven creatures so far
removed from humanity.

About Me

I'm Star Nova, and I like to tell stories. This blog used to be more topical, but then just became a place where I could easily hold my stories. I have several short stories and two big works in progress, as well as some old crap and some pending revisions OF some old crap.
I write in order to share how I see the world, from my own perspective. If you're here, you're probably here from Tumblr or Twitter. I hope you like my stories. And if you don't, I hope you at least read them before you decide that. (: